


cast a burden overhead

by akaparalian



Series: we're usually about to die [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Gift Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 08:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1461814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaparalian/pseuds/akaparalian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's so much more intense now that Jason's <i>here</i> - it's one thing, after all, to know that he was searching for a spectre, that his father had told him in his own convoluted way that the kid in the old leather jacket had left the building, but it's another to see the fully realized proof that somehow, some way, the kid in the old leather jacket had stuck his middle finger to death and climbed out all on his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cast a burden overhead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mooitstimdrake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mooitstimdrake/gifts).



> when i outlined this fic, the outline was titled "jason todd is dead: the man. the fic. the legend", and i think that's very important.
> 
> very, very belated birthday fic for mooitstimdrake. sorry, moo, so so sorry. but, um, at least it's finally here? ugh.
> 
> also, a lot of handwaving when it comes to timeline, and especially when it comes to inclusion of pjo/hoo characters, since i wanted to keep the focus more on the batboys and not go into too much detail, so. and also i've... very much never been to new york city, so. 
> 
> title from "november" by the wilderness of manitoba.

The first time Tim meets Jason Todd is somewhere unnamed on the Fields of Asphodel, and it's not the best place for a first meeting, but he feels like that's really pretty fitting.

It's always jarring, when he goes to visit his father for one reason or another and sees another half-blood staring at him, gray and empty - someone he'd known, maybe, or one of the names he's heard on the lips of the older campers. It's a fact of their lifestyle, and he's the son of the god of death; he understands it. Intrinsically. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he's _used_ to it, and certainly not that he _enjoys_ it in some way, no matter what jeering his peers might toss his way now and then. He likes the dark, works well and silently at night, but he doesn't like _death_. There's a difference, and he is intimately acquainted with it.

Jason Todd - though of course he has no idea who the guy is at first - is just different enough that he can't quite reconcile him with being just another half-blood felled fighting the good fight. It's something subtle about the way he looks, smirking and loose and just this side of lazy, sitting cross-legged on the ground and leaning back on the palms of his hands, dark hair falling roguishly into his eyes, and when Tim looks at him he gets whispered images of - horrible things, flashing blades and the sorts of twisted monsters he hears people at camp talk about in deadly quiet voices, sometimes, and worst of all there's a beautiful boy with the coldest, harshest golden eyes he would have thought possible. But then he blinks and it's all gone, and he can hear his heart beating in his ears and there are sharp blue eyes looking back at him, considering; his feet are moving before he really knows what's going on, and he stops a few respectable feet away, wets his lips, tries to figure out what he wants to ask.

"What's your name?" is what he eventually settles on, after a pause long enough to earn him raised eyebrows and a tiny, amused grin, which widens into a laughing smirk with the addition of the question.

"Jason Peter Todd," he says, and the voice fits his face, Tim thinks, slightly rough and with an undertone of something like - gunmetal, maybe, slightly dark and smoky-smooth. He's never heard of Jason Peter Todd, though; that's not one of the names he's heard in stories around flickering campfires on missions, or at night when he's trying to sleep but the others are leaning over the edges of their bunks, reminiscing quietly about people they once knew and battles they once fought. It's not a familiar name, but even so the weight of it feels right, somehow, settling into his chest in a way that almost reminds him of his first day at camp, like something he hadn't previously understood finally makes sense. It's an utterly confusing feeling, and he shakes his head slightly to chase it out, refocusing on Jason Todd himself, smirk still smugly curling his lips as he looks at Tim with raised, expectant eyebrows.

"What?" he says - snaps, really, though he hadn't intended to. He's just a little embarrassed by the look; he can tell when he's being laughed at, even silently. Jason does chuff out a real, audible laugh then, but it's not mean, just drily amused. 

"Don't I get _your_ name?" he asks, and that - well, that's fair, Tim thinks, and it smoothes his slightly-ruffled feathers, too, and he gives Jason a short, calculating look before dipping down into a sarcastic little bow, bending just slightly at the waist and tucking one hand in close to his abdomen even as he flourishes the other one out.

"Timothy Jackson Drake, son of Pluto," he says, in his best faux-imperious voice, which he feels is only right for introducing yourself with your full name. And title. Whatever, Jason started it, so his surprised little laugh and the way something in his face twists slightly, scrunching up in confusion before settling back out into what appears to be his default sardonic smile, are totally irrelevant, even as he's finally standing up in order to return the mocking bow.

"In that case," he says, reaching out to take Tim's hand and delicately pressing a kiss to his knuckles, earning himself a scowl and a halfhearted smack at his hand and Tim hastens to remove it, "make that Jason Peter Todd, son of - Mercury," and there's a weird sort of hesitance there, but Tim doesn't question it; he's too relieved to find that his suspicion had proved correct, though he supposes there aren't really that many _other_ ways for the death of someone in a distinctly modern leather jacket to be painted on the backs of his eyelids in swords and monsters and magic. It didn't really take a great detective to figure that one out.

At any rate, Jason's outright laughing at him now, though it's not a mean sound; there's a slight edge to it, true, but if Tim's guessing right that’s more because of the fact that he's been alone down here for a while than due to the fact that he's being an asshole. After a moment, he chuckles a little, too, because - well, it _was_ kind of ridiculous, and also because somewhere in his chest there's a sharp relief fizzing through his veins, because Jason had barely batted an eye when he'd said _Pluto_ , and _that_ didn't happen every day.

They both quiet down after a moment, Jason rocking back on his heels and giving Tim a considering look from under the fringe of his bangs. "So," he says eventually, sticking his hands in the pockets of his jacket and shifting his weight ever-so-slightly to one hip (not that Tim notices or anything, because that would imply that he's _looking_ , which he pointedly isn't). "Down here to visit your pops, Timothy Jackson Drake?"

Tim groans, already regretting telling this jerk his full name, but nods all the same. "Camp stuff," he says, and Jason nods back, even though his face does that little scrunchy confusion thing again before smoothing out a second later; Tim doesn't feel like elaborating, though, because that would involve explaining that by 'camp stuff' he really means 'using any excuse to come down here because it means getting a break from the frankly annoying people who make up a small but vocal portion of Camp Jupiter's residents'. Not that he really dislikes most of them when it gets right down to it, just - it can get to be a bit much, sometimes. And the Underworld might not have many advantages, but for peace and quiet it usually rises to the occasion.

Not that he minds having that peace and quiet interrupted, sometimes - after all, he was the one who'd done the interrupting this time around. Sometimes he does get approached by people he once knew, but that's pretty rare - most of the half-bloods end up with better than Asphodel, and there are just so _many_ souls that chance meetings are uncommon. He gets the feeling that Jason Todd really does have no idea who he is, though, which certainly makes talking to his spirit a lot less - well, awkward.

"You on a tight schedule?" Jason asks him suddenly, startling him out of his thoughts, the look on his face an oddly fond amusement. "'Cause if you're not, I've got a pretty nice patch of purgatory here, and it's been forever since I heard what's going on up there." He gestures blandly upwards, and Tim feels his mouth quirk up in a half-smile without his permission, charmed despite himself by the faux-laziness of the motion when in reality it's not too hard to read the tense expectation and hope in the lines of Jason's shoulders. 

"Sure," he finds himself saying even before he's consciously decided to agree, ignoring the little voice in his head pointing out that he probably won't be able to fill in any of the blanks he actually cares about, unless by some miracle they actually _do_ have friends in common who've just completely failed to mention their dead buddy Jason. "What do you want to know?"

\---

And he 100% did not see it coming, but it turns out that asking that stupid question sort of accidentally started a _thing_.

He doesn't get to see Jason all that often, of course. Even if he wanted to, he'd be hard-pressed to spend much more time in the Underworld than he already does - he needs a pretty damn good excuse to get out of camp and go down there, and those are lighter on the ground than he might sometimes prefer. Besides, things are picking back up again at camp; Kon and Bart and Cass are great, really wonderful, and even the few outlying annoyances seem to be… more bearable, at least. Try as he might, though, to point these things out to himself as reasons he should in fact be _avoiding_ the errands and questions and requests that lead him to the Underworld, in his position as a sort-of ambassador that comes, in turn, from his position as one of only two known children of Pluto, he just can't manage to make himself stay topside, because now there's someone down there waiting for him.

On the one hand, he tries not to overestimate his value to Jason; they've known each other for no more than a few weeks. They've got a long time to go yet before they reach the sort of easy conversations he can enjoy with his more corporeal friends, without a stale sort of awkwardness hanging heavy in the quiet moments. On the other hand, he's Jason's only link to the outside world, which he figures means Jason probably values him at least a _little_ , and he also - he'd like to think they are actually becoming friends. Jason is his own kind of strange, abrasive at weird times and avoidant of odd, seemingly random subjects, like any sort of discussion of his friends, either living or dead; he's often rude, he won't explain things like his odd obsession with half-bloods on the East Coast and asking about names that Tim's absolutely never heard before, but at the same time, Tim genuinely _likes_ the guy. They argue on occasion, but he's honestly never really had a friendship where he _didn’t_ spend at least a little time arguing, and Jason rarely has any actual edge to his voice. It probably shouldn't feel as easy as it does, actually, the familiarity just sort of seeping in when they aren't expecting it, and he gets the feeling that if he were to ever actually explain the whole thing to someone, anyone, he'd get laughed at. Because, seriously, it's actually a little hilarious that one of the easiest friendships he's ever fallen into has been with someone who's _dead_.

Not that they spend very much time talking about Jason being dead, obviously. Or at least, Tim doesn't; Jason cracks jokes about it more frequently than Tim would have expected, but the more he gets to know him, the more fitting that sort of black humor seems, though he supposes Jason was probably more upset about it at first. It had startled him the first time, but after the fourth or fifth pun revolving around spirits or séances or the one particularly notable suggestion about messing around with an Ouija board, he gets used to it.

It's actually pretty smooth sailing until a couple of months in. It's sometime in early March, and Jason - well, he's a little bit weird about asking about it, like it's something he's a tiny bit ashamed of, but he really seems to like it when Tim describes the weather to him. His eyes sort of relax at the corners, and he gets a lazy little grin on his face no matter whether Tim's describing raging thunderstorms or the most gorgeous sunny afternoons. So they're sitting together, backs against the wall Jason somehow managed to find down here in what sometimes seems more like a cave system than an endless plain, and Tim has settled into telling him about the weather as a way of opening the conversation every time he visits, and today it's a pretty good story; the morning had started out misty and grim, the sort of ugly gray that makes even the Underworld seem somewhat cozy in comparison, but by the time he'd left camp that morning it had all been burning off, the unpleasant cloudiness melting away into clear blue skies and a crisp early-spring breeze.

He doesn't see it coming, because he's so absorbed in trying to find the right words to - make Jason happy, whatever, he knows that's a tall order, it would be crazy if it _wasn't_ a tall order, Jason is _dead_ , but he feels like he owes it to whatever strange, macabre friendship they have to make a conscious effort to, you know, brighten Jason's existence a little bit. So, fine, maybe he's a bit overly absorbed in making it _perfect_ , drawing the image of the cornflower-blue midmorning sky out of his memory and bringing it into this dank, vaguely musty corner of Asphodel, because so far this - his presence, and his attempts at conversation, for what they're worth - are all he's figured out how to do that seem to succeed in making Jason's world a little bit brighter, even though that's probably really ridiculous for a lot of reasons that Tim's been purposefully avoiding considering. (For instance: what happens if he has to stop coming to the Underworld? Eventually, he thinks when he's at his most worried, when it's nearing two in the morning and his thoughts are keeping him up late in a room full of his slumbering fellow campers, he's going to leave a Jason alone. He's not going to want to, but it's going to happen; he doesn't see a way it can't. And if - when - that happens, what's Jason going to do? He really is trying not to overestimate his own value, in this as in anything, but really - he can't imagine that it'd be a fun experience to suddenly have your one link to the real world, the living world, taken away by time and distance. Tim wouldn't be able to handle it, can't even imagine the shock of a sudden transition from having, even tenuously, a grasp on a reality that didn't involve endless dusk-gray fog and endlessly murmuring ghosts to having nothing, not even the occasional visitor, to prove that you were ever really alive in the first place. He can't even imagine what that would feel like, and frankly? He doesn't want to.)

So, summarily, Tim is so busy trying to suddenly become a master wordsmith and develop the ability to describe the sky in the most perfect and poetic way he can manage that he manages to completely miss the fact that Jason is staring aimlessly into the whispering edges of Asphodel, not paying enough attention to merit the amount of effort Tim is stupidly putting into this. Actually, he's not paying much attention at all, or… any, really, but Tim doesn't notice that until Jason cuts him off mid-sentence.

"Hey, Tim?" he interrupts, not looking at him and not even bothering to wait for a response before he keeps barreling ahead - and yet there's something about the set of his face that keeps Tim from interrupting him in return, makes him just sit and listen to the words that drop off his tongue, stilted and stiff. "There's something I've been - shit. I mean…" He hesitates, and for just a moment his eyes flick away from whatever he's focusing on out in the distance and meet Tim's, instead, and Tim watches as they steel over. "You ever heard of a guy named Luke Castellan?" He pauses, then, and hesitates for an extra half-second before apparently deciding to go all in: "Or the Battle of Manhattan?"

Tim blinks, taken aback. He was expecting - well, actually, he's not sure _what_ he was expecting, but he feels like this is all going to be a little anticlimactic. "Uh. No, actually?" he says, phrasing it as a question without really realizing it. "Should I have? Um, if… Luke is a friend of yours, I can try to… track him down?" he adds when instead of answering him, Jason visibly shuts down just that little bit more, the usual sardonic smile bent completely out of shape into a tightly-pressed line, and Tim's bewildered but trying his best to roll with the punches, here.

"Yeah," Jason says after a moment, and it sounds like it's being pulled out of him, the single syllable accompanied by a harsh gust of air that hisses against the backs of his teeth. They fall into silence for a moment that's just long enough to be completely uncomfortable, even on top of the cloud of overall awkwardness that's suddenly enveloped them, and then Jason shifts ever so slightly away from Tim and stares resolutely at the ground in front of him and opens his mouth again. "Okay, one more question. When I met you, you said you were a son of Pluto." Jason looks up from the ground and stares, pinning Tim down with a look that's so much longer and so much more intentional than it had been moments ago. "Why?"

This whole thing devolved into uncomfortable confusion so much more quickly than Tim was expecting. "Uh, because it's _true_?" he replies, too bewildered by the question, and the fact that all of this is happening _now_ , months into whatever strange breed of friendship this is, to bother keeping the edge out of his tone.

"Yes," Jason bites out, visibly frustrated now more than ever, "but - why not say Hades? Why…" He trails off, grits his teeth. "Why so Roman?"

Tim blinks, opens his mouth to reply, closes it again, his thoughts a low, confused buzz in his ears. "I don't understand," he says finally, feeling his brows knit down tightly over his eyes. "Why _would_ I say Hades? Why use the Greek name?" He has no idea where Jason's coming from; he can sort of feel the beginning of a revelation tickling at the back of his mind, thrumming slowly with the obvious fact that there's something else going on here, something he's missing, but before he can even begin to figure out how to ask Jason just what the _fuck_ he's talking about, Jason's looking resolutely away from him, standing up, turning his back and shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

"I think you should probably go," he says after a moment, stiffly, his voice as tense and closed-off as the set of his shoulders, and Tim still has no idea what the hell is happening here or how suddenly their conversation went to shit, but he can feel a cold, sinking feeling in his chest that's way too fucking familiar, way too fucking similar to the way the Legion used to make him feel back before Cass and Kon and Bart had decided he was worth their time. Not - not loneliness, not really, he's comfortable being alone, but dread. "It's probably time to actually go talk to your old man, he's expecting you," Jason continues, and the knot of ice in Tim's chest gets a little bit bigger.

He doesn't want to, feels like it's a combination forfeit and abandonment, but he doesn't know what else to do, so he goes.

\---

He doesn't make it back down to the Underworld for a while after that.

It's not - he's not _sulking_ , though he'll admit to being a bit nervous about what Jason might or might not say the next time they see one another. It's more that things suddenly get very busy in the Legion - Jason Grace goes missing, for one thing, and everyone else is driven half-mad trying to find him. Tim almost sees the irony in the fact that both of the recent troubles in his life are named Jason, but he's honestly more concerned with doing his part in the effort to figure out just where the hell their praetor went. So there's not much need for him to go down to the Underworld for a while, because no one, _no one_ , wants to send him down to ask if Jason Grace has made any appearances down there, and other than his disappearance there's not much on anyone's mind at the moment.

So Tim stays above ground, participates in the search efforts, keeps his head down, tries not to think too hard about any of the things that had come out of Jason Peter Todd's mouth before he'd summarily ejected Tim from his presence. He's got bigger fish to fry, and besides, it's not like he's going to have a sudden epiphany and Jason's weird-as-shit behavior will instantly make sense. That's not, generally speaking, how Tim's life works, so he just buckles down and pretends he doesn't have any mysterious ghostly friends who like to ask strange questions and then completely shut down when he tries to figure out what's going on.

Not that he's even a little bit bitter.

At any rate, it's a couple months before he has a chance to get back down, though they are more willing to send him than they are his stupidly mysterious half-brother Nico di Angelo, or the less-mysterious but painfully new Hazel Levesque, a couple of other recent change in the population of Camp Jupiter. Nico is, apparently, a more valuable asset - Tim's good, but Nico's better, and Hazel's just too green, so it's Tim they end up sending down to talk to dear old Dad to ask a few questions and request the favor of the Lord of the Underworld for a quest that the praetors are - or, well, the praetor is - about to send a group out on, investigating some monster activity lingering suspiciously close to the entrance to the Underworld.

So down he goes, doing his best to resolutely ignore the tingling relief that's settled at the back of his neck at the prospect of seeing Jason again and figuring out just what exactly had gone wrong last time. He tries very hard to contain himself and go and talk to his father first, do his job, but his curiosity and concern get the better of him by the time he's even halfway to Pluto's magnificent black-marble palace, his feet turning and leading him to Jason's corner of Asphodel instead.

He makes it there in record time, moving smoothly through the gently murmuring ghosts and cutting through the crowd in a way that probably wouldn't be possible if most of them were more than semicorporeal, and - and Jason isn't there.

Tim frowns, does a double take. Okay, so that's… never happened before. He spins around, scanning the mass of bodies behind him, and stands there looking around for a good five minutes without managing to do anything but feel like an idiot. He supposes it makes sense that Jason isn't here - they hadn't exactly parted on the greatest of terms, and besides, he probably isn't here 24/7 anyway, and it's just lucky he was always in the right place when Tim had visited him before. It'd get pretty boring to sit in the same exact spot for your entire afterlife, he reasons, and so he finally, reluctantly decides to just get his business done and head back topside. After all, he's not down here to - mope about his dead friend giving him the cold shoulder, or whatever, he's here to do a job.

(Jason's still not there when he goes to check after he begs for his father's favor on behalf of his praetor, but he tries not to let that get to him. He fails, but he only fails a little - it's just a little tug at the back of his mind, only a little more noticeable than it was before, so he counts that as a moderate success.)

The problem, of course, comes another few weeks after that, when he's sent back down about _another_ quest to investigate _another_ strange and worrying bout of monsterly activity (because that's exactly what they all need, more monsters). He's determined, this time, and going into the thing with a different state of mind seems like the right thing to do; at any rate, he's dead set on talking to Jason this go-round, so he goes back down to the right part of the Underworld, is not surprised but a little disappointed all the same to find that Jason isn't there, and settles in to wait.

He isn't expecting to have to wait very long. Jason had told him, back before this stupid - whatever this is, that he really did spend most of his time here; he'd explained that there isn't much difference between the different bits of the Underworld, anyway, so save a little wandering around every now and then to stave off complete and utter mindless boredom, he tended to stay put, said there wasn't much point in wandering around all the time the way some of the spirits seemed to do. So Tim's prepared to give it a couple of hours, tops, before Jason comes back. Except then a couple of hours becomes three, becomes four, becomes five and _six_ hours of waiting. He thinks he dozes off at some point, but mostly he's just… watching, observing the constant shuffle of the ghosts past this little place and feeling that sinking feeling get a little colder with every passing minute.

He finally gives up around the six-hour mark, hating himself a little but unable to justify staying any longer - it's already plenty lucky that Pluto isn't actually expecting him, so he won't have to make any excuses about the delay.

The walk to his father's palace is forgettable, especially because his mind is consumed, much to his vague annoyance, with worry. The rational part of him is still trying to maintain that this really isn't all that strange, and he can't blame Jason for wanting a little variety. The irrational part is already very convinced this is deliberate avoidance, and trying to figure out how he's going to fix that. 

He makes his way inside silently, his father's skeletal guard acknowledging him with silent stares and leading him inside, even though he knows the way to the throne room by heart, now. It's policy, and the skeletons are as Roman as their sovereign is, and thus generally pretty big on policy. He follows after them on autopilot, his feet dangerously close to scuffing the meticulously-maintained floors as he makes his way in to see the lord of the dead.

When they finally arrive at the right room and the skeletons pull open the heavy ebony doors, intricately carved with scenes of the greatest wars and disasters in the memories of the gods, Pluto is hard at work, hunched over his ornate marble-and-steel throne with countless rolls of parchment and heavy, leather-bound books hovering before him, numbers swirling through the air from one sheet to another, rearranging and changing shape with flicks from the god's fingers, his eyes tracking quickly from one to the next without ever settling on anything for more than the most fleeting second.

When one of the skeleton guards steps forward and announces Tim's arrival in his creaking, entirely unnatural voice, though, Pluto freezes everything with one definitive motion, the digits settling themselves back down into their rightful places and the gentle fluttering of the paper drawing to a halt.

"Hello, Timothy," he says, his voice richly regal and still the slightest bit intimidating; Tim may have grown up talking to the high points of Gotham society, his parents taking him around to parties and society functions once he was old enough to be proper, but he still doubts he'll ever get completely used to talking to the gods.

"Father," Tim replies, ducking into a small bow the way the praetors had taught him before he was sent down here the first time, with strong instructions not to embarrass the legion in any conceivable way. He takes a deep breath, remembering that he is, after all, here on legion business, and not to think about Jason Todd, and begins. "I've been sent to ask for your favor on another quest…"

He talks on autopilot, familiar enough with the situation that he can spin it out for his father in the formal way he's learned is best with the god of death and riches without having to pay an awful lot of attention. His mind doesn't wander, per se, but he does sink into a sort of hazy state of mind, too busy actively trying to keep control of his wayward thoughts to be fully present in the moment. His father doesn't notice, though, or at least doesn't comment other than to ask Tim an occasional question about the quest itself and the strange goings-on that caused it, which he's able to answer easily.

"Well," his father says once he's finished, leaning back on his throne and nodding decisively. "Tell your praetor that that can be arranged."

Tim bends into a deeper bow this time, arms stiff at his sides, and says, "Thank you, Lord Pluto," voice even and eyes lowered respectfully even as he straightens out of his bow, resolutely ignoring the double-edged tingle of both regret and relief that he'll be leaving soon.

"Anything else?" Pluto asks, sounding - not bored, but finished, convinced this conversation is over, and already looking back at his work, numbers swirling on the parchment beneath his long fingers, and Tim shakes his head, even though he knows the gesture won't be seen.

He turns to leave, feet shifting with the gentle scuff of leather on polished granite, feels the breath of a chilly black breeze on the back of his neck, and hesitates. Hesitates a moment too long, actually, to pass it off as anything other than a reconsideration, and he can feel the moment his father notices that he hasn't actually left. It's that recognition, as much as anything else, that makes him turn around, raise his eyes from the dark, glimmering stone beneath his feet to his father's shadowed face, and compels him to open his mouth.

"There is something else," he admits, and Pluto doesn't still his work this time, but Tim can tell he _is_ listening, as much as the gods ever are, so he continues. "There's… well, there's a - there's someone down here I've, um, been talking to, lately. I didn't know him when he was alive, but we're - friends, I suppose." He pauses here, not quite sure how to explain that he's suspicious because he's been getting the cold shoulder from a ghost, but figures he might as well go all in, because at this point there's no way his father doesn't already thing he's a little crazy, for a mortal.

"He's, um, gone missing? So I was wondering if you could tell me - I was wondering if you knew where he was," he says, tripping over his words at the end in a way that he usually isn't prone to and feeling his gaze settle back down to somewhere between his toes, such that it's only in his peripheral vision that he notices when the numbers stop whirling up and out of the documents spread over his father's desk and the light of their magic fades into the same grim and torch-lit aura of the rest of the palace.

"What is his name?" Pluto asks slowly, but there's something about his voice - and when Tim looks up, he can tell for certain that his father already knows _exactly_ who he's talking about.

His throat dries up with that knowledge, and it takes him a moment to muster up the air to answer: "Jason Todd," his father's face is utterly still, utterly passive, not even a flicker of motion in his dark, deep-set eyes, "he was a half-blood. Um, son of Mercury." Something _does_ flicker over his father's face at that, but it's far too quick for human eyes to catch, just a little flash of something that he knows he wasn't supposed to see, even though Pluto holds his gaze steadily and does not so much as blink to conceal it.

Finally, after what seems like - years, maybe, of silence in the big echoing room, Tim drops his gaze back to the floor and Pluto answers. "He is no longer here," he says, slowly, slowly, and Tim feels his heart stutter for just a moment as he takes in what that means. He doesn't ask for clarification - now that he's been told, he can feel it in whatever part of his psyche is dedicated to a connection with the dead, a slight shift in feeling that tells him that Jason Peter Todd is no longer within his frame of knowledge.

It's impossible. Or, rather, it shouldn't be possible, because gods only know Tim's long since come to recognize that very little is _actually_ impossible these days, especially if some supernatural being has put their mind to making it happen.

"Did you," he asks, hating himself just a tiny bit for the way he has to pause and clear his throat to get rid of the choked-off sound at the bottom of his voice, "did you do that?"

Pluto hesitates, clearly not sure whether this is information he actually wants to pass along, and shakes his head. "Not really, no," he admits, "though I was… aware, of course," as though anything happens down here that he _isn't_ aware of - which, of course, is why Tim asked him in the first place. Not that that matters, but it's one thought among many that are suddenly pounding through his head too fast to count and almost too fast to notice, because _Jason Todd has left the Underworld._

A part - a large, rational part - of Tim wants to ask just how the _fuck_ that happened, especially because it happened apparently thanks to someone _other_ than the Lord of the Dead himself, but the rest of him is too captivated by the fact that, unless he is vastly misinterpreting what he's just been told, Jason is up there somewhere, alive, probably confused and almost certainly not in a stable frame of mind, and, shit - Tim has no _idea_ where he is. None.

Then again, he can fix that.

He nods once, determined, and turns to leave, only to spin back around after a few steps to drop into a short bow and say, sincerely and with all the steel determination he can muster already lacing his tone, "Thank you, father." And then he turns back around and carefully walks, does not run, the fuck out of hell.

\---

He doesn't go back to camp that night.

He knows he probably should, or that he should at least stop to send a message, and he will if this takes as long as he sinkingly suspects it's going to, but there's not a single ounce of motivation in his body to turn around and head back for safety and shelter when he has a quest like this. Besides, it's not altogether unheard of for trips to the Underworld to take several days; things are strange down there, and that includes time. So he has a few days' grace period at least to figure out exactly what the hell is going on before he has to worry about sending word of his self-imposed quest back to camp.

From the instant he gets back above ground, he's moving, barely stopping to consider before he heads for the nearest bus station and gets a ticket as far east as possible. He supposes it's possible that Jason's still somewhere on the west coast, but it seems highly unlikely, and Tim doesn't have time to stop and try to figure it out just yet; all he knows is that the familiar knot of ice in his chest has been transformed into a pressing sense of urgency, and he and Jason had talked at length one day about the fact that they were both children of the east coast (never any specific locations on Jason's part, of course, but he'd certainly asked after New York and Gotham often enough), so he heads east.

While he waits for the bus to groan into the station, other people fluttering around him in a murmuring whirlwind of color and sound that he tunes out with an ease born of a great deal of practice, he begins to plan, closing his eyes and leaning back in the hard plastic seats of the waiting area with the gentle rush of his thoughts taking the place of the more frenetic motion of the people around him, as a bus gets ready to leave for San Jose and another arrives from the north. The thing is, he doesn't really know much of anything yet, beyond the basic fact that Jason's up here somewhere. Any usual sources of information - anyone back at camp, for example, or any of the old legends, or the big dusty books in the praetor's library - are more or less useless. There is precedent, of course, but he doesn't exactly have time to track down Orpheus and ask how this sort of thing is done, nor would he even want to, because he's not sure the kind of reception he'd get if he hunted down an old Greek to ask about that time he failed to bring his true love back from the dead.

Orpheus may be out of the question, but that train of thought does give him an idea. He frowns, eyes still closed, as he considers it; it's pretty hit-or-miss, and his chances of managing to get it off the ground at all aren't great, but it may be the best thing he's got, he realizes. He sits up, sighs, and opens his eyes. Fuck. He really _hates_ talking to most ghosts, but that's apparently what he's going to have to do.

With mortal ghosts, it's usually different, but many demigods don't make it to the Underworld for some time after they've died. Tim knows this, knows that they hide in all sorts of nooks and crannies of the mortal world, and he knows that they've usually got information on the goings-on of other demigods that's generally accurate and hard to find elsewhere. The problem, of course, is going to be tracking some of them down to begin with; the actual talking won't be nearly as much of a problem for him as it would be for some of his fellow legionaires, being as he's a child of the Underworld, but that doesn't make actually finding any of them any easier.

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and considers. The best option would obviously be a battle where a significant number of people died, but - he has reason to avoid many of those. He'll go if he has to, but _until_ he has to… he'd really prefer something else. And for that matter, ghosts of the great west coast battlefields aren't likely to know much about an escapee from the Underworld, heading east. The above-ground spirits gossip, sure, so in all of Tim's previous experience with these things, word has gotten around, but Jason isn't likely to have gone near enough to any western demigod battlegrounds to have even gotten on their radar.

And that's when he gets his second Jason-related epiphany: Manhattan. 

He very nearly smacks himself for not realizing it sooner, because, honestly - that had been one of the very last things Jason had mentioned to him, obviously that would be a good place to start. And besides, anything with a title like "The Battle of Manhattan" that made someone speak in the creaking tone of voice Jason had used is probably going to be a pretty good place to find some dead demigods.

So he leans back in his seat, waits for his bus to arrive, and plans.

\---

He finally makes it to New York City in the late-night hours a few days later, having spent two days on a series of busses moving east and, as a last resort, shadow-travelling when he'd otherwise have had to wait hours for the right bus to come, if it would be coming at all. As a result, he's pretty exhausted by the time he actually gets where he's going - not least of all because it's like eleven o'clock at night, and he's left to his own devices to try and navigate a city he hasn't visited since he was twelve and his parents took him here to do the slightly more sophisticated versions of all the touristy things you're supposed to do when you visit New York, and even then it wasn't as though he'd actually been expected to figure the city out or get them where they were going. So it takes him another few hours to figure out how to get to Manhattan, not-so-subtly clutching at the handle of his knife under his jacket the entire time.

He can see the Empire State Building, a silhouette he's familiar with jutting out among the myriad others on the horizon, and… he's not altogether sure what about it draws his attention, but there's something there, he's sure of it. He's too far away to get much of a reading, but - he can feel bare hints of the same things he'd felt and seen the first time he'd met Jason, little signals of the kinds of deaths that half-bloods so often have, blades painted crimson and screaming monsters and the vague, violent confusion of battle, so he shivers in the artificial light of the street and changes track, heading for the building, because it seems like the right place to start looking.

It pays off: he's barely within a radius of a few hundred meters from the bottom of the building when he sees the first ghost, sitting slumped in a doorway, easy to mistake for any other homeless kid if a mortal got lucky enough to catch a glimpse through the Mist, other than the armor, of course, and the blood. She's young - painfully young - and her eyes are glazed over with a dull resignation, but that's not even the part that catches Tim's attention. The part that makes him stop in his tracks and do a double-take is that she's wearing - well, it's not _entirely_ foreign to him - it's still armor and, after all, he _does_ recognize it. It's just that it's… Greek. Definitely Greek, and that doesn't make _any_ sense. 

She looks up suddenly, stares straight at him, and there's something about her eyes that has him tamping down on a full-body shudder; maybe that's a logical reaction to seeing the dead, but he's long since grown out of it, too used to the occasional glimpses through someone's body to their bones and the still, quiet quality of their eyes. This girl, though, is so much more unsettling than he's used to, and maybe that's the way the deep red of her blood contrasts with the - gods, _orange_ of the shirt under her armor, red like it's never dried, or maybe it's the way she's looking at him like she knows him, but either way he finds himself crossing over to her automatically, barely even in control of his own motions, stopping at the bottom of the steps while she sits up, perching almost primly at the top.

"You're looking for someone," she says after a heavy moment of pause, eyes narrowing shrewdly but gaining none of the spark of - well, of life that Jason's had always had, and Tim feels something in his stomach twitch. He inclines his head in agreement, trying not to react to the way her eyes are obviously trailing down the lines of his armor, coming to rest of the place where the golden "S" of his SPQR shirt is just visible, poking out from behind his breastplate. "And, unless my post-mortem knowledge is failing me, you're Roman," she adds, sounding - not quite surprised, but almost amused, like that conclusion _entertains_ her.

"You say that like you're not," Tim replies, maybe a beat too late, and watches the way one corner of her mouth lifts in a sardonic smile.

"What do _you_ think?" she snorts, almost laughing now, tugging on one corner of her horrendously orange shirt. Tim has… absolutely no idea how to respond to that, honestly, other than to think distantly that when he _does_ track Jason Todd down, he's going to have some serious explaining to do.

Speaking of which: "Um," he says, trying to steer this conversation back on track, "you're right, though, I am looking for - have you, do you know Jason Todd?"

She still doesn't look surprised, and the smirk gets even bigger as she slowly nods. "Somehow I knew you were gonna say that," she sighs, "the guy always did have a nose for trouble," but all the same she points lazily to her right. "Head that way for a while, find a bus station. You wanna head for Gotham." Tim doesn't start or anything, but he must still look a little surprised, because she says, "He passed through here, but that's his old stomping ground, so. Anyway," she continues, "down in the Narrows, there's a little old-world district, and, well. There's this place, sign says Sabine's, it's red brick. Look in the alleys around there; word on the street is, that's where he's been lurking." She locks eyes with Tim, stares for a moment, and then nods, apparently satisfied. "Go. Apparently he hasn't been looking too hot. You look like you've been on the road for days, and if you're that determined to see him, he'll probably be glad to see you, too."

"He fucking better," Tim mutters before he can stop himself, even as he thanks his lucky stars for the amount of detail evidently available through the ghostly grapevine, and the girl cracks a real grin when he hastily covers with, "Um, thanks for your help," and turns to go.

"No problem, Caesar," she calls after him, and he almost groans, because - of all the Rome jokes she could _possibly_ have made, she went for Caesar? Still, she was very helpful, so he tosses a wave over his shoulder before he starts booking it in the direction she'd told him to go.

He would just shadow-travel, but, well. He's pretty fucking exhausted, and she'd been kind enough to point him to a bus station, anyway, and he's got enough cash left - certainly a reason to be grateful for the Legion training that says to take money and weapons on _all_ missions, if possible, even the ceremonial ones - so he heads to get on _another_ bus.

It's three hours to Gotham City, and from there it's a good hour and change of walking to the Narrows, but at least now he's on home turf and knows exactly where he's going. He didn't exactly spend a ton of time down here growing up, of course, but at least he knows where it is he should be looking this time, and he's actually pretty proud of himself for the speed with which he manages to find his way to what that spirit - he briefly regrets not asking for her name - had called the old-world district, with signs in Russian and Polish and all manner of other languages, mostly eastern European. He never does find that little brick building the girl had told him to look for, the name Sabine's never popping out among the litany of signs with peeling paint and fading letters or else too-bright, garish neon, but he wanders for long enough that he more or less loses track of what time it actually is, too focused on searching the shadows for that one familiar outline, exhaustion dimming his vision to a confusing amalgam of silhouettes and the occasional burst of washed-out color.

And then, finally, he sees him from the corner of his eye: he's leaning one shoulder against the mouth of an alleyway and looking up at the sky, eyes cast in darkness and face more drawn than it had been back before he was alive again, but it's Jason, it's definitely Jason, and Tim stops in his tracks with one last stutter-shuffle, shoes scuffing along the pavement with a noise that draws his attention, cloudy blue eyes widening in surprise even as he straightens, takes an abortive half-step forward.

They're both silent for a moment, Gotham equally silent around them, but then Jason opens his mouth - his living, breathing mouth, Tim thinks with something like exhausted gratitude - and says, "You found me."

He's too - he's come too far, and seen too much, and he's too fucking tired for this. He answers anyway. "Of course I did."

\---

It's almost four in the morning and the only place open is Denny's, so they go to Denny's.

Tim can honestly say he's never been inside one of these before, but he's so far beyond hungry and exhausted at this point that the smell of grease ground into every conceivable surface is actually appealing - _really_ appealing, if he's being honest, and his stomach rumbles responsively almost as soon as they walk in the door. Jason gives him a look that's somewhere between amused and incredulous, and they sidle over to a table in the corner before anyone has a chance to actually seat them.

The cracking vinyl seat isn't actually that comfortable, but Tim melts into it anyway, leaning into it and letting his head thunk back against the wall behind his chair with a sigh. He keeps his eyes focused on Jason, though, as much as he can from the somewhat uncomfortable angle, half-convinced that if he so much as glances away for a second Jason will melt into smoke and slink back down into the Underworld to never be seen again, that this is all some vast trick being played by one or other of the various all-powerful entities that seem to enjoy making Tim's life painfully interesting.

Jason doesn't disappear, though, and Tim sits back up after a moment's repose, fixing Jason with a more direct stare as a bleary-eyed waitress comes over to pour them both some coffee. They thank her in low murmurs, not quite looking either her or each other directly in the eyes, but nonetheless doing a pretty good job of fixating on one another's presence in this stupidly grimy Denny's in the goddamn Narrows at a time of night that should be prohibitive of anything except sleep or maybe, _maybe_ , some sort of half-blood caper, but not this - not having tracked down a ghost to the leery side of Gotham City. Then again, Tim does suppose that this is without a doubt something that qualifies as a half-blood caper, because this sort of thing just _doesn't happen to normal people_. For that matter, nothing _this_ crazy ever even happens to most demigods, but thoughts like that are delegated to the back corner of his consciousness, far away from the infinitely more important part that's still marveling over the fact that Jason's _here_ , real and solid and warm, and if Tim listens he can hear him breathe; he hadn't noticed it until now, actually, but he's never heard Jason Todd breathe before, because the dead don't need to. Being faced with the slightly rattling, gusty proof that Jason - living Jason - _does_ need to breathe, he doesn't just absorb the oxygen through his skin like some sort of, of - frog or bacteria or something, he's got to breathe just like any other human being on the face of the planet - it's forcing him to reconsider, once and for all, a lot of things he's come to think about Jason, most of which center around the fact that he is - was - dead.

It's so much more intense now that Jason's _here_ \- it's one thing, after all, to know that he was searching for a spectre, that his father had told him in his own convoluted way that the kid in the old leather jacket had left the building, but it's another to see the fully realized proof that somehow, some way, the kid in the old leather jacket had stuck his middle finger to death and climbed out all on his own.

Of course, that doesn't forgive the fact that, as Tim so eloquently and suddenly puts it, "You lied to me, you piece of shit."

Jason startles, and Tim (very graciously, in his opinion) pretends not to notice. "What?" he says, voice creaking slightly, as he moves to wipe up the bit of coffee he'd spilled on the table in his surprise. "I did not, shut up."

"Did so," Tim challenges, face dead serious but nonetheless trying to hold back a tiny smile, because that - that had sounded more like the Jason he was used to, not the cold-shoulder missing-from-hell Jason he'd grown to worry about. "You told me you were a son of Mercury, but that's not true, is it?" He takes a sip of his coffee, studying Jason over the rim with his eyebrows slightly furrowed. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but - it's actually Hermes. Right?"

Jason picks up his own mug and takes a long, slow drink, clearly biding his time. He sets it down with a solid noise, and lets out a gust of a breath as he rolls his shoulders and slumps forward to lean on his elbows. "Yeah," he says quietly, glancing up to meet Tim's eyes for just a second before lowering them back down to the cheap plastic of the table-top, thumb aimlessly stroking the side of his coffee mug. "Yeah, you're right."

It's Tim's turn to sigh, now, and lean back in his chair to study Jason from across the expanse of the table, salt and pepper shakers and napkin holders and bottles of syrup not doing a very good job of hiding the way Jason's fingers are tracing tiny patterns into the surface even as he pretends he's deeply intrigued by something going on in the depths of his coffee. "Why?" he asks, and Jason's fingers don't stop moving, tiny anxious circles still pressing themselves into the green laminate table, but he looks up again and his eyes look just the tiniest bit clearer, so Tim counts that as a win.

"You didn't say anything," he says slowly, "and I know they never told us back at Camp Half-Blood, so. I figured we… weren't supposed to know, and, I mean." He snorts softly, takes another sip of coffee, moves from planning tiny shapes on the table to fiddling with the corner of the napkin dispenser. "I'm not usually one to complain about messing with the way the gods want things done, but it just… didn't seem right. I mean, the Greeks and the Romans kind of hated each other's guts, yeah?"

"Yeah," Tim answers slowly, feeling like he should add a _but that's not how we are_ or _but I don't hate you_ or maybe even _I came a long fucking way to find you, you know_ , but Jason's still looking at him and something about his eyes tells Tim that he already knows all that, and he didn't mean to imply anything different, so he lets it go, changing track smoothly. "Camp Half-Blood?" he inquires, thinking back to that girl in the orange shirt on someone's stoop in the heart of Manhattan, and Jason laughs, rough and sounding like he hasn't done it in a long, long time.

"Oh boy, do we have a _lot_ to tell each other now, Timmy," and normally Tim would complain about the idiotic nickname, but - Jason's laughing, and his smile doesn't look like it's about to make his cheeks crack and bleed from disuse, and he's more or less stopped fidgeting, lacing his hands behind the back of his head and leaning on the back legs of his chair instead, and Tim just really can't bring himself to say a single word in the negative.

"You bet we do," he says instead, smiling around the rim of his cup, and he feels like maybe the two of them are going to be just fine.


End file.
